The Blog

This week, I want to talk about leapfrog thoughts. I came up with this term to describe the leaps and bounds of an unmanaged mind imagining the worst-case scenarios, as I used to do when my children did things I thought were incorrect. I remember when I was teaching...

How do you stay focused on long-term goals? How do you get back on the horse after you’ve fallen off? I hope this episode will illuminate some useful principles for you. Darren Hardy’s excellent book The Compound Effect posits that every major success in life is...

Suppose that you notice that your child or children interrupt you often when you may be busy on a phone call or talking to somebody in person. Why is that? And what can you do to quietly communicate your attention to your children’s woes? Well, first of all, know that...

This week, I’ll be drawing on the lesson that changed the trajectory of my life. Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s book The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children is a must-read for a parent attempting to make the journey into a conscious, healthy...

A tantrum can look a lot of different ways, but it’s a global word to describe a child having a hard time. Here’s a secret: toddlers aren’t the only people who have tantrums. Older kids have them. Teenagers have them. ADULTS have them! If you feel exhausted at the end...

This episode deals with a lot of subjects, but I’ll be focusing on a specific tool that you can use: the expression “asked and answered,” which is short form for “you’ve asked, and I’ve given my answer.” Now for an example: Suppose you’re in the checkout line at the...

I’m always trying to think of things that worked in my classroom with 20 kids so they’ll scale down and work in your four walls. One thing that helped my 1st-graders was teaching them tangible words to stand up for themselves and be assertive. At the beginning of the...

What if I told you there was a real unicorn in Paris you could visit? Well, hold your horses, because there isn’t really a unicorn in Paris! But for children, and not just young children, that might be totally believable. Why is that? A child’s mind is full of...

Imagine you’re on a flight and the plane starts experiencing serious turbulence. How do you react? If the flight attendants are freaking out, you might also freak out — maybe even start calling people to say your last goodbyes! But if the flight attendants are calmly...